I would like to develop URL's which look like the following:
http://mysite.com/products/1/best-product-in-the-world
Where all i need to get to the proper record is the following route:
http://mysite.com/products/1
When I add the product description piece to the URL ("best-product-in-the-world") I get URL encoding issues. I've tried to use Server.UrlEncode when constructing this portion of my URL in an ActionLink(...):
<%= Html.ActionLink(item.Subject, "../Post/Detail",
new { id = item.ID,
descriptiveUrl = Server.UrlEncode(Product.ShortDescription) },
new { rel = "canonical",
title = Product.ShortDescription,
#class = "product-hyperlink" })%>
But this renders regularly encoded elements for special characters and spaces, much like the following:
http://localhost:2392/Products/Detail/1/best+product+in+the+world253f
...which creates a 400, bad request exception. Not sure I've done the question justice, but can provide further clarification if need be.
Update: this post's URL is as follows, and i'm trying to do something very similar!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1148955/creating-search-engine-friendly-urls-in-asp-net-mvc
In a deeper Google search, I found the following link for generating slugs:
http://www.intrepidstudios.com/blog/2009/2/10/function-to-generate-a-url-friendly-string.aspx
Thanks #Rob and #Coding the Wheel for giving me the terminology I really needed to find this answer!
A simple option would be to add a property to your model object with an accessor that normalises the appropriate field (short description in this case) down to a suitable "slug"; that is, the bit of junk text after the identifier. You then use this when constructing the URI.
The normalisation process might be as simple as removing any non-alphanumeric characters and replacing spaces with hyphens.
The standard practice here is to store a 'slug' with each post that will function as the post's outward-facing URL. For example, your slug for the above post would be:
best-product-in-the-world
A decent CMS will do this for you automatically, and allow you to tweak the slug before saving.
Related
I am using Discourse forum software. As in its current state, Discourse presents links to topic in two ways, with and without a post number at the end.
Example:
forum.domain.com/t/some-topic/23
forum.domain.com/t/some-topic/23/5
The first one is what I want and the second one I want to not be displayed in the forum at all.
I've written a post about it on Discourse forum but didn't receive an answer what Regex to put in the permalink normalization input field in the admin section.
I was told that there is an option to do it using permalink normalization like so (It's an example shown in the admin under the Regex input text, I didn't write it):
permalink normalizations
Apply the following regex before matching permalinks,
for example: /(topic.)\?./\1 will strip query strings from topic routes.
Format is regex+string use \1 etc. to access captures
I don't know what Regex I should use in order to remove the numerical value of the post number from links. I need it only for topic links.
This is the routes.rb routing library and this is the permalink.rb library (I think that the permalink library should help get a better clue how to achieve this). I have no idea how to approach this, because it seems that I need some knowledge of the Discourse routing to make it work. For example, I don't understand why (topic.) is part of the regex, what does it mean, so their example doesn't help me to find a solution.
In the admin I have an input field in which I nee to put the normalization regex code.
I need help with the Regex. I need the regex to work with all topics.
Things I've tried that didn't work out:
/(\/\d+)\/\d+$/\1
/(t/[^/]+/\d+).*/\1
/(\/\d+)\/[0-9]+$/\1
/(\/\d+)\/[0-9]+/\1
/(\/\d+)\/\d+$/\1/
/(forum.domain.com(\/\w+)*\/\d+)\/\d+(?=\s|$)/\1
Note: The Permalink Normalization input field treats the character | as a separator to separate between several Regex expressions.
I think this may be the expression you are looking for to put inside de settings field:
/(t\/.*\/\d+)(\/\d+)/\1
You can see it working on Rubular.
However, the code that generates the url is not using the normalization code, so the expression is being ignored.
You could try normalizing the permalink there:
def last_post_url
url = "#{Discourse.base_uri}/t/#{slug}/#{id}/#{posts_count}"
url = Permalink.normalize_url url
url
end
I didn't truly understand your question, but if I got it right, you are saying that you want links with /some-number at the end but don't what links with /some-number/some-number at the end. If that is the case, the regex is:
forum\.domain\.com\/t\/[^0-9\/]+\/\d{1,9}$
You can replace 'forum' with your forum name and 'domain' with your domain name.
This will remove trailing "/<digits>" after another "/<digits>":
/(forum.domain.com(\/\w+)*\/\d+)\/\d+(?=\s|$)/\1
I'm trying to build an Href using Razor
The string is going to end up looking like this:
https://www.notmysite/controller/action?order_ID=xxxxxxx&hashComparator=iFxp3%2BszAMaEB%2FnHCtRr9Ulhv0DumtyDumCik4gKypJqi0BdOGXXsr9QDkfefAsLaR1Xy%2BrX9VcuzP1pF2k6dL%2F92UxphzTKqNAZP2SSZGWtvyO5az%2F9JvDY%2Bsq5TBQo7%2FYAAMIU4QxiSX1SBKk8SUNECW3ZmKM%3D
In my model I have the order id and the hash string
As the route is not a part of my site I don't believe I can use the default methods like #Url.Action
and therefore can't use protocol: Request.Url.Scheme
like I've used elsewhere.
So at present I'm trying to figure out how to create this using string functions
I've tried
Url.Encode
Url.EscapeDataString
Html.Encode
but am getting no where fast:
Click Here to be transferred
The output text always has plusses and equals in them and doesn't work.
Which combination do I need?!
I've figured out a way of doing it:
#{
var url = string.Format(
"https://www.notmysite.co.uk/controller/action?order_ID={0}&hashComparator={1}",
#Uri.EscapeDataString(Model.bookingNumber.ToString()),
#Uri.EscapeDataString(Model.hashCode));
}
<p>Click Here to be transferred</p>
Edit 2015 - As mentioned by Jerads post - The solution is to only encode the query string elements and not the whole URL - which is what the above does.
This was the first link that came up for this issue for me. The answers didn't work for me though because I am using core, I think. So wanted to add this in.
System.Net.WebUtility.UrlEncode(MyVariableName)
If Url.Encode doesn't work try the above. Also as stated before don't use this on the entire URL string, just use it for the individual querystring variables. Otherwise there is a good chance your URL wont work.
The problem is that you're trying to encode the whole URL. The only pieces you want to encode are the querystring values, and you can just use Url.Encode() for this.
You don't want to encode the address, the querystring params, or the ? and & delimiters, otherwise you'll end up with an address the browser can't parse.
Ultimately, it would look something like this:
Click Here to be transferred
The easier method is to use #Html.Raw(Model.SomethingUrl)
I'm using asp.net mvc 4 to build a web application.
To create url to an action I'm using ActionLink as follows:
#Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", new { id=item.PrimaryKey })
item.PrimaryKey can be a string, so it can cointains dots or slashes or any other special character; When it contains dots or slashes i get an 404 error. ¿How can I avoid it?
I found a solution here
http://mrpmorris.blogspot.mx/2012/08/asp-mvc-encoding-route-values.html
but its complicated
¿Is there an easier solution to this?
I found a solution here
http://mrpmorris.blogspot.mx/2012/08/asp-mvc-encoding-route-values.html
but its complicated
That's because the problem you are attempting to solve is complicated. You may take a look at the following blog post from Scott Hanselman in which he explains the various challenges in doing this. I will summarize his conclusion:
After ALL this effort to get crazy stuff in the Request Path, it's
worth mentioning that simply keeping the values as a part of the Query
String (remember WAY back at the beginning of this post?) is easier,
cleaner, more flexible, and more secure.
So basically if your ids can contain any characters, they should be passed as query string parameters and not part of the Uri path.
But if you insist and want to have the ids as part of the Uri path you may be inspired by how StackOverflow does it. Look at the address bar of your browser now. You will see this:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15697189/special-characters-in-actionlink-asp-mvc
Notice how the url contains 2 tokens: the actual id and a SEO friendly name. Jeff Atwood showed a sample filter function they are using to generate those SEO friendly slugs. The slug is just for SEO purposes. You could replace it with whatever you want and get the same result:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15697189/foo-bar
You can use Server.UrlEncode() to encode it:
#Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", new { id=Server.UrlEncode(item.PrimaryKey) })
reference to msdn with example
I know with symfony2 is very trivial get pretty urls through routing system and I love it. But when the routes parameters are based only in slugs I've got to find by slug.
$em->getRepository('Bundle:Entity')->findOneBySlug($slug);
I thinking about combine both parameters like stackoverflow http://mysite.com/articles/234/the-title. Mantaining the slug parameter only for SEO proposes and find directly with the entity id (234).
$em->getRepository('Bundle:Entity')->find($id);
What are the pro / cons using this strategy. I'm right way?
I would go as you suggested and use both an unique identifier and a slug, because you do not have to worry about unique slugs this way.
But one thing you should is check if the slug is valid.
So do not use URLs like this: /articles/{id}/{unchecked-slug}, because if you do that you can reach the same article with an unlimited number of different/evil URLs, i.e. /articles/123/the-correct-title and /artcle/123/some-dirty-words.
So i would suggest using something like this:
$em->getRepository('Bundle:Entity')->findOneBy(array('slug' => $slug, 'id' => $id);
I am not a SEO expert, but I do not think, that shorter URLs are THAT important, as long as it contains useful words, that may be part of a search.
From a pure SEO perspective, you want to have a shorter URL since they tend to attract more clicks and are easier to share. However, catering to only SEO would be a mistake IMHO.
Adding a unique identifier to the string would be a smart thing to do, and would make things easier to lookup and maintain. I would suggest putting the unique identifier at the end of the URL string to maximize the "SEO effect".
Keywords in the URL might be a ranking signal, but really they drive up the CTR if the keywords found in the URL match the user's query. When that happens, the keywords in the URL become bolded in the Search Results Page (SERP). By putting the ID at the end of the URL, you're helping to ensure that the keywords in the slug have a better chance of appearing to the user, which means a better chance of being bolded, which hopefully leads to more CTR.
Here's what I would suggest:
http://example.com/articles/the-title-234
No one has suggested it so far, so I'll offer what WordPress does. If there is already a permalink in the database that is identical to the one being supplied, you simply concatenate a counter at the end.
http://example.com/blog/my-article
becomes
http://example.com/blog/my-article-2
becomes
http://example.com/blog/my-article-3
The method eywu suggested is second best, but only because you still have the full ID in the permalink. No one wants to remember that, and it has no meaning to search engines.
I have a news section where the pages resolve to urls like
newsArticle.php?id=210
What I would like to do is use the title from the database to create seo friendly titles like
newsArticle/joe-goes-to-town
Any ideas how I can achieve this?
Thanks,
R.
I suggest you actually include the ID in the URL, before the title part, and ignore the title itself when routing. So your URL might become
/news/210/joe-goes-to-town
That's exactly what Stack Overflow does, and it works well. It means that the title can change without links breaking.
Obviously the exact details will depend on what platform you're using - you haven't specified - but the basic steps will be:
When generating a link, take the article title and convert it into something URL-friendly; you probably want to remove all punctuation, and you should consider accented characters etc. Bear in mind that the title won't need to be unique, because you've got the ID as well
When handling a request to anything starting with /news, take the next part of the path, parse it as an integer and load the appropriate article.
Assuming you are using PHP and can alter your source code (this is quite mandatory to get the article's title), I'd do the following:
First, you'll need to have a function (or maybe a method in an object-oriented architecture) to generate the URLs for you in your code. You'd supply the function with the article object or the article ID and it returns the friendly URL with the ID and the friendly title.
Basically function url(Article $article) => URL.
You will also need some URL rewriting rules to remove the PHP script from the URL. For Apache, refer to the mod_rewrite documentation for details (RewriteEngine, RewriteRule, RewriteCond).